


Parvulus Invidia

by sherwoodfox



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Government Experimentation, One-Sided Attraction, Other, Outside Perspective-style Character Study, Past Relationship(s), Post-Canon, Some Humor, Some Mature Language, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-06 22:30:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19071982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherwoodfox/pseuds/sherwoodfox
Summary: The new Amestrian government has decided to recognize Envy as the last surviving homunculus following the events of the Promised Day. As per the principles of science, such a creature should be studied throughly (under safe and controlled conditions) prior to its destruction- after all, never before has so complex an alchemical creation been properly observed at all.Unfortunately, human feelings often stand in the way of science, and Envy has been manipulating those for over a century.(Or, Envy does not commit suicide in the Underground- and as a result, more than one person suffers.)





	1. Beginning

“You cannot talk to it,” said the Major General Armstrong, her eyes as cold as her voice. “Though it will try to talk to you.”

“Yes sir.”

“You cannot interact with it in any way, save for the work you will be doing.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s been properly restrained, so it cannot harm you. You cannot do anything to compromise those restraints.”

“Yes sir.”

“You cannot listen to anything it says.”

“Yes, sir.”

“...”

“Then the rest of the information is in this folder here. You may enter the laboratory to begin when your partner arrives.”

Heinz was handed a pale envelope, wide, but too thin to contain much of anything. Armstrong looked at him hard for a minute more- it was difficult not to shy away under her eyes- and then she left, a swish of blonde hair and heels that struck purposefully in the concrete floor. Heinz was glad when she was gone. It was impossible to breathe around her- not that he was a man of no confidence, but she had a way of making everyone feel bumbling with those blue eyes. He had felt this ever since he had started working in Briggs, all those years ago, as the resident State Alchemist. He had never been able to manage himself naturally in a room with her.

But despite that, it had been a good job. The people at Briggs took good care of each other. He had been comfortable. He hadn’t needed a promotion. He hadn’t wanted one.

He hadn’t wanted to be moved to something like this. 

_“You are one of the only alchemical experts we can confirm had no dealings with the enemy. You are the only one we can trust.”_

He wished that had never been said to him.

He bent the envelope in his hands, folding it into a cylinder and then flat again, jiggled the keys to the new laboratory with hands that couldn’t keep still. There couldn’t be much in the envelope, only a few pages, hardly enough to be considered proper ‘research’. But that was why he was here, wasn’t it? Because no one knew about the...thing...he was supposed to be studying, and no one who claimed to know could be trusted.

Hell, he didn’t even know! He knew nothing! When that terrible day had come- when his soul, alongside everyone else’s, had been sucked from his body and into the air- he had been caught completely unaware. He didn’t even know what was inside the laboratory. Clearly, something that could talk...

But he couldn’t go in until the other guy showed up- his partner- someone called Marcoh. 

Heinz debated reading the files. He didn’t think his mind was settled enough to take anything in. There was anxiety aching in his chest, something that could only be cured by action, not by reading. Still, he should at least open it.

Fingers fumbling with the lip of the envelope, Heinz didn’t have a chance to even look at its contents before the door to the antechamber moved again. This time, not for his former supervisor, but for an old man in a lab coat, that must be-

-oh, God, his face was horribly disfigured, like wax that had been melted, what in the world had done _that-_

-Doctor Marcoh, who smiled at him, an expression that twisted his rubbery, scarred skin around like the folds in a collapsed circus tent. Heinz tried to smile back, but he wasn’t sure if it came out right. 

“The Iron Circle Alchemist,” Marcoh said, and Heinz nodded after a pause. That was his title, certainly, but he had heard it spoken so few times since his arrival at Briggs he had almost forgotten it. To the soldiers there, he had just been ‘Heinz’.

“It’s wonderful to meet you,” Marcoh continued, offering a hand which Heinz took, and Marcoh’s grip was firm but not overpowering. “I’ve read some of your work. It’s interesting stuff.”

“Oh, thank you,” Heinz replied, surprised, and he realized then that he quite wanted to like Marcoh, unsettling appearance or not. But he hadn’t read anything from the Crystal Alchemist. All he knew was that he had been in Ishval (Heinz hadn’t, his State qualification had been achieved after the war). Actually, hadn’t he heard that the Crystal Alchemist was dead, or missing, or something? He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t really one to keep up with the news.

“Have you read that?” Marcoh asked, gesturing to the folder, and Heinz started to say “Oh, not yet,” but Marcoh was already moving past him, towards the door.

“It doesn’t matter if you have,” he was saying. “There’s not much in there. I supplied most of it, actually- and the Fullmetal Alchemist, if you’ve heard of him- but that was all second-hand observation. No one has studied this thing properly yet.”

He unlocked the door to the laboratory and paused, his hand on the doorknob. Heinz wasn’t sure what he saw in that distorted face- he had never been good at reading people, even ones with normal appearances. Perhaps, it was some kind of resignation, but he couldn’t say. All he knew was that there was a depth in those sagging features that hadn’t been there before.

“And, well…” Marcoh said, his voice soft. “This is the only one left. So we need to find out as much as we can before it’s destroyed.”

Heinz nodded but Marcoh wasn’t looking, he opened the door and stepped in, and Heinz could do nothing but follow him.

Inside the laboratory the lights were bright, and Heinz had to blink to adjust to them, certain he would get a headache eventually. It was a white room, only moderate in size, with a railing and a few desks set up around a small steel table, and on top of that table- in the natural center of the room, where eyes were drawn- was a tiny glass box.

Marcoh walked around the railing and Heinz followed, his eyes trying to take it all in, because there didn’t seem to be anything in here, and he hadn’t known at all what to expect, but he had expected there to be something…

“Hello again, Doctor Marcoh,” said a high, tinny voice, and at the sound of it Heinz jumped horribly. The words had seemed to come from nowhere- but now, looking over Marcoh’s shoulder he could see that there was something in the box.

“How the tables have turned,” said the voice.

“Oh my God,” said Heinz, though not in response to the voice, which could have been a hallucination because there was no way it was coming from something like _that._ The box had a- a what, a leech? a worm?- in it, a tiny green thing with bulbous eyes and wet, wrinkled skin, split from top to bottom by a sickly pink slit, marked by tiny lamprey-esque teeth.

“And who’s your friend?” asked the high voice, and in time with it the flaps of the slit- a mouth, Heinz now realized- moved, and with a nauseous turn of his stomach he realized that he had never seen anything like this ever before.

“This,” Marcoh said, “is the only surviving homunculus. Our subject of study.”

Homunculus. Heinz knew the word, but he had never looked too far into that- his specialty was in metal and glass, barricades, not living alchemy. What had happened to that guy he had heard of, the Life-something Alchemist? If it was a homunculus, shouldn’t he be working on this instead? But then, this didn’t really look human at all, artificial or otherwise.

“I have a name,” said the little thing, flicking its tail back and forth. A shudder of revulsion creeped up Heinz’s spine.

“Remember to ignore it when it talks,” Marcoh said to Heinz, and there was a bit of a bite in his words, in his twisted expression. Heinz just nodded, and for something to do with his hands opened the briefing envelope, taking out the pages inside.

“I’m Envy,” said the worm. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“We don’t need to do anything tonight,” Marcoh said, like the worm hadn’t spoken at all. “We don’t have all the equipment. I just wanted to see it. You needed to see it.”

“Yeah,” Heinz said slowly, and even though he had taken the papers out now, his eyes were drawn past them to the thing in the jar. It was looking at him with those swollen, gelatinous eyes, and he could see now that they had purple irises. They were mammalian eyes- almost human eyes. It flicked its tail back and forth in the box, lazy, and though it was disgusting he wondered to himself why Armstrong had acted like it was such a terrible threat.

“Read the file tonight,” Marcoh said. “Tomorrow I’ll have everything, and we can begin.”

~

The contents of the folder were a strange whirlwind. The Philosopher’s Stone, government conspiracies, estimated 175 years- a shapeshifter. Even reading it left him out of breath.

Just what had he gotten himself into? This stuff was of myths and monsters, bedtime stories for children. It was difficult to reconcile with the world he knew. He had never been the kind of man who had sought these things out- plenty of alchemists did, looking for truth in the fables, but they always ruined themselves. No one of State caliber would entertain such fantasies in their work, that was what he had said whenever he was inevitably asked, by those inexperienced in the field. And more then that, he hadn’t believed in it, never, even when he was a child he had never believed in any of it…

Now that he had those unbelieved in things within reach, he wasn’t sure how to handle it.

He didn’t know if the feeling in his chest was resentment, or incredible excitement.

~

“So how is work?” Mother asked, her voice tinny from the distance on the phone. “I hope you’re dressed warm enough up there. Winter is coming, after all.”

“Actually,” Heinz said, even though he had been putting off saying this, “I’ve been transferred to Central for a new project. So you don’t need to worry about that.”

“Oh! Why didn’t you tell me! I will come visit! Where are you staying?”

He answered her questions, and told himself he would need to clean the apartment he was renting. It had every quality of a ‘bachelor pad’ as it was now, from the unpacked boxes to the crowded sink.

“And now that you’re back to civilization,” Mother continued- because to her Briggs had never been civilization- “you’ll have a chance to meet someone.”

“I have plenty of friends up North,” Heinz said, and this was why he hadn’t called her, why he hadn’t visited her on the first day of his arrival in Central. He couldn’t stand this.

“No, no, you know what I mean. I want _grandchildren,_ Kristoff.”

Like his teenage self, Heinz found his head nodding glumly to what she said, even though she could not see it.

“And it shouldn’t be so hard. You’re rich, thanks to the alchemy. And there are plenty of lovely women here in Central.”

“Of course, Mother,” he said to her, which was what he always said, what he had been saying for years, before and after he had discovered that women weren’t what interested him at all.

“I hope to hear good news soon,” she replied.

~

“We’re trying to figure out how it was made,” Marcoh said in the lab, laying out his own papers, the tools he had needed- strange devices, things that looked like they were made for poking and prodding, decorated with minute alchemical circles. “What makes it run.”

“Father made me,” said the high voice in the jar. “And I have a stone for a heart. You know that, Doctor Marcoh.”

Marcoh didn’t look over at it.

“From what I’ve been told, the first of these was fabricated in a laboratory in Xerxes, over a thousand years ago- so there are no records, or not good ones, at least.”

“Xerxes! I never got to see Xerxes.”

“Okay,” said Heinz, feeling overwhelmed still from reading the files. “So we need to deconstruct it? Down to the most basic parts? Then we might be able to say how it was put together.”

“Hey! No! I don’t want to be _deconstructed-”_

“That will have to be a last step,” Marcoh continued. “If we can’t put it back together, we’ve lost our specimen. I’d like to look at the ties between the thing and its stone, first.”

“Okay,” said Heinz. Standing next to Marcoh, he wasn’t sure if he should be there at all- he had so much less experience in this field, he was like an assistant. Well. There was nothing to be done about it, he supposed.

~

“Hold it open,” said Marcoh through gritted teeth. Having fabricated one-way entrances on the sides of the box, hands covered in thick leather gloves, they had pinned the little lizard to the glass and peeled its maw so far open it seemed like it might split in half- and there, nestled between folds of slimy pink flesh, was the Philosopher’s Stone, fat and red and glistening. The light of it was dimmer than Heinz had been anticipating- he had imagined something much more impressive, being an item of legend that it was.

The worm had not been complacent, but it was subdued now- those huge eyes darted back and forth between their faces, wet with a thin, clear liquid that pooled beneath its head, and occasionally it would whine, the most it could do with its mouth spread apart. Heinz wasn’t sure where the vocal cords were, to be making such sounds- but then, he was not a biologist.

“Those threads there- I think those connect the rest of it to the stone,” Marcoh said softly, prodding at the membranes in question, with something much like a scalpel. “But if you feel it, the energy seems to be going both ways- if we were to cut these, I think the stone and the body both would be destroyed, not just one…”

The thing whined again, tiny legs squirming in the air, and Heinz realized that the clear fluid must have been tears. It was crying. Of course, being split open like this, having one’s heart poked at with knives- it must be painful. Heinz found he felt a little poorly about that. He had never been cruel to animals. 

Even though he was the one outside the cage, it was a bit of a relief when Marcoh was finished and they let the thing go.

~

“What’s this thing’s formal name?” Heinz asked one day, in the middle of filing a report. The notion hadn’t occurred to him until just then, when he had penned the first bracket where the scientific species classification would go. 

“Oh,” Marcoh said from across the room, seeming surprised. “I suppose no one has given it one.”

“My name is Envy,” the worm called, stamping its feet audibly in the glass container. “I told you already. Just use that.”

“We should come up with something, then,” Heinz said. “Since we’re the ones cataloguing this specimen. How good are you, with the old Xerxian tongue? I’m pretty rusty, to be honest.”

“Not terrible,” Marcoh replied, putting his palm under his chin in thought. “I wonder…”

“If you want something in Xerxian,” said the worm, “then it’s _‘Invidia’._ Father did call me that, sometimes. Usually when he was angry.”

“Parvulus,” said Marcoh, smiling a little to himself. “Yes, I think that’s appropriate. _Parvulus invidia.”_

“Hey, no,” squealed the little homunculus. “That’s mean! Pick something else! I hate it! _I hate it!”_

“We’ll go with that,” Marcoh said to Heinz, returning to his own paperwork, and the worm let out a frustrated wail that was so similar in sound to that of a human teenager Heinz almost laughed.

“Alright,” Heinz said, and he wrote it in, the black ink making matters official.

~

“You know, I’m actually super pretty,” the worm was saying, rocking back and forth in the box, holding its tail between stumpy legs. “You know, Doctor Marcoh, but _you_ don’t.”

The second ‘you’ was clearly directed to Heinz, it looked right at him, and he looked back even though he was supposed to be checking the results from the electricity experiment they had just done.

“Whoever you are. Won’t you tell me your name? I won’t do anything with it, I promise. I just want to know.”

The thing almost never stopped talking. Heinz guessed it would be difficult to gag it, with a mouth like that, but he honestly didn’t mind- it made the days interesting, listening to it prattle on, though he knew he wasn’t allowed to reply. The talking seemed to bother Marcoh, though- he always tensed up when it addressed him, and Heinz wondered if he knew how obvious it was.

“Anyway, I really am. Pretty. Cute too. Yeah, I’m really cute…”


	2. Middle

“We should take a look at the shapeshifting,” Marcoh said. Their latest pile of data from the monitor circles had been run through, backwards and forwards, they had milked it for every last drop of information they could. The little worm ran on the soul-power from the stone alone, constantly pulsing throughout its arteries, and that stone formed roughly 30 percent of its body mass, and, and…it still wasn’t good enough, the government wanted a full and complete breakdown, they needed to understand this thing perfectly. Heinz knew why well enough. It was the last of an endangered species; once it was killed, that species would be extinct. This was sound science. A perfectly reputable field.

“That’s one of the things I don’t get at all,” Marcoh continued. “I can’t think of a circle that would let you do something like that. There have been advances, of course, in bioalchemy, but…”

“I don’t use a circle, dumbass,” said the worm. “I don’t need one.”

“...but,” Marcoh got louder, he insisted on pretending like he couldn’t hear it, even though Heinz often thought its input was rather useful. “by my understanding, one would need a different circle design for every figure, to account for different balances of the elements. Different height, different weight…”

“Well, the weight doesn’t change, actually-”

“...all those things would change the amount of every element, change the nature of the transmutation. The stone covers cost and supply of materials, but I don’t know how the change can be done without anything to narrow the focus…”

“-except when it’s burned away by some psycho with a revenge complex-”

“...never mind that everything has to change. How does it maintain memories, identity? Every time it shifts it has to make something new entirely…”

“-actually, not really, I just have to move stuff around-”

“Okay, slow down,” said Heinz, louder than both of them. The little headache he had been putting off every day was blooming, and he wanted to snip it at the root before it could grow. And it really was impossible, trying to think clearly over both of them. He honestly found Marcoh more bothersome than the homunculus- he had a tendency to go on and on, finding tangents, describing in detail problems without putting a step forward to solve them. He was a brilliant alchemist, of course, but still. At least the worm was somewhat entertaining.

“Let's just set another monitor circle,” he continued. “Open ended. Then when it changes, we can see what kind of transmutation it’s doing, and where.”

“Yeah,” Marcoh replied, looking up from his papers. “Yeah, no, we could do that.”

A high, tiny sound reached Heinz’s ears- a squeaky little cough. When he looked over, the worm was staring at him with disapproving eyes (how emotive it could be, for something that didn’t have a human face), standing firm on its stumpy little legs, and though it was a very ugly monster, something about that was undeniably cute.

 _“Ahem,”_ it said again, and only when Marcoh looked up did it continue. “I think you’re forgetting something.”

“What’s that?” Heinz asked before he realized what he was doing, and he cringed when Marcoh looked at him in shock, turning back to his papers, like he could pretend he hadn’t said anything.

“You talked to me! Hey! You talked to me! Wheeee!” He could hear smacking sounds against the glass, it must have been jumping up and down, and he couldn’t resist just glancing over- it was running in circles, chasing its tail, eyes huge and glittering.

“Sorry,” he said to Marcoh. “I didn’t mean to.”

“He talked to me! He talked to me!”

Marcoh just shrugged. Heinz couldn’t help but feel a little annoyed- that rule was foolish anyway, they had to listen to the thing talk, it only held them back not to speak with it. And Marcoh was being so picky; he needn’t cling so tightly to regulation.

“Anyway, I was saying,” said the thing in the jar, “that you forgot something. I can’t shapeshift. Not like this. I’m stuck- why else do you think I would look like _this?”_

“It can’t change like that,” Marcoh said softly, through slightly gritted teeth. He looked right at Heinz, not at the worm, and on his waxy face the intensity of his gaze was intimidating. “I know that. We know that- we’ve just determined it, right now all the flow of energy is going to keeping that thing alive.”

“So we’d need more energy,” Heinz said calmly. “If we want to do it properly.”

The room was quiet- the thing had become still, and wasn’t speaking. He had a feeling it was watching him, not Marcoh, but he didn’t dare turn at all to look.

“Yes, we would.”

“Do you know where we could get that?” Heinz asked, wary of the strange atmosphere. By ‘energy’, they could only mean one thing, they had tested this, there was only one compatible source. But to get ahold of that…

“Let’s pack up early,” Marcoh said suddenly. “There’s something else you should see.”

~

Heinz had never been to this part of the research facility before. He only had keys to the front door and the homunculus laboratory. He had guessed it would go deeper, but hadn’t been bothered to think deeply on it.

Marcoh led him to another laboratory- this one protected by more stationary guards than their own.

“The researchers aren’t in,” said one of them.

“That’s fine,” Marcoh replied. “We’re just taking a look.”

Inside, this lab was larger than the one Heinz was used to. And instead of a glass box, in the center of the room there was a huge metal cage, within which sickly humanoid bodies writhed, crawling over each other, off-white hands clawing at the bars. Each one seemed identical- emaciated, tall, lined with red tattoos and sporting a single bulging eye in the middle of their foreheads. The sight was disgusting- far more disgusting than the subject of their research, and that was saying something.

“What are those?” Heinz asked after a moment.

“Well, they're here because we’re trying to find out exactly,” Marcoh said. “Their creator was killed, and his records got destroyed in the battle of the Promised Day- you read up on all that, right?”

“Right,” Heinz replied.

“Well, they run on the red stone, too.”

Heinz looked back at the cage. It was funny- those struck him more as the ‘homunculus’ from legend. Artificial humans- ultimately inferior, like dolls. Nothing like what they had in their laboratory, that thing wasn’t ‘human’- artificial or otherwise- at all.

Except for maybe in the eyes, and the way it spoke. A little like a child…

And then he suddenly remembered something.

“In the file, there was a short account given by some Xingese girl,” Heinz said. “It must have been these she was talking about- our subject was able to absorb these for power.”

“Yes,” Marcoh replied, and there was a hesitancy in the colours of his voice.

“Well, problem solved then,” Heinz continued. “There’s quite a few here, we can probably take some, and it won’t be an issue for the other project.”

“Yes, I suppose we could.”

~

“I don’t know if we should go through with it,” Marcoh said to the night air, or maybe to Heinz. The city streets of Central were well lit, even though the sun had already set, and the cobblestone road outside the research facility smelled wet with rain. Heinz stopped to look back at him- it was still hard to read his face, even after all this time.

“We need to, for the project, but...I don’t know if we should risk it.”

“You mean, risk restoring the homunculus?”

Marcoh nodded slowly, perhaps he was wary, perhaps there was a kind of pain in his expression. Heinz didn’t really know. He didn’t really want to deal with it, either.

“I don’t think there’s much risk,” he said, his manner businesslike. He wasn’t lying. He had read the files, of course, but despite that he had trouble seeing the little thing as dangerous. It didn’t seem so monstrously clever, the way everyone went on about it. But Marcoh was not convinced- of course, he had been in closer contact with it before, but perhaps being on opposite sides of a war had clouded his judgement somewhat.

“I’ll adjust the container,” he continued. “That’s the kind of thing I do, remember? It will be perfectly secure. And besides, we’re only giving it one of the doll-soldiers.”

There was a silence, Marcoh was still nodding, but it didn’t seem like he was listening. The air was damp and that made its chill more pervasive, winter was coming, and Heinz wanted to go home and make himself something hot to drink- not wait around trying to convince Marcoh to continue the work he had hired Heinz to do.

“I used to live in this small town,” Marcoh said softly, and his breath pooled in the air before his face. “A little farming town. It had a train station, and that was about it.”

Heinz shuffled his feet. He was not in the mood to hear Marcoh’s life story, not just then. 

“I hid there after the war. It was my home- many wonderful people, wonderful sights. Peaceful.”

Heinz nodded, and smiled a close-lipped smile, but Marcoh didn’t seem to be paying attention to him at all. His eyes had an overbright quality to them, like he was remembering something clearly ingrained in his mind.

“The last thing Envy did before it was defeated- well, before I defeated it, up North- was tell me how that village would be destroyed.”

The rain started to come down harder, cold drops hitting the skull and sliding down, obscuring the streetlights.

“Destroyed, and everyone there killed, because I had escaped. And I knew, then, that it could have done it. It really could have. Carved another blood crest into my home...and that was before all of this. Imagine how angry it must be with me now.”

Heinz didn’t think the homunculus seemed very angry. It never threatened Marcoh in the lab, it just teased him. And besides, it could hardly have that power now, not with the old government disestablished. 

He just couldn’t see it.

“That won’t happen,” Heinz said in the following quiet. “It won’t get out. So don’t worry, okay? You’re probably tired- tonight we’ll get some sleep, and take a crack at it in the morning.”

Marcoh just looked at him on the steps and, fed up with the rain and the dramatic atmosphere, Heinz left him there, walking to his own car and driving home. He didn’t think much about the story Marcoh had told- it was scary, sure, but he really just couldn’t bring himself to be bothered by it.

~

Within the week the shapeshifting setup was complete. Heinz had been clever- designed a new container, one made of a special alchemically synthesized material, one he had only used in Briggs a few times. It was strong, and also not brittle, unable to shatter and resistant to great force while also staying clear so observation could be done. At Briggs he had tested it with bullets, and those barely chipped the thing, so he doubted the little worm would be able to pull off anything strong enough to break out. And besides, they were only giving it one of the dolls- containing about enough juice, Marcoh had figured, for one change, as well as some added body mass. Heinz wasn’t concerned at all- in fact, he was a little excited to see what would happen; the work had become more intriguing to him over time. Monitor circles were laid out beneath the new cage- anything that happened, there would be records of it, etched into the circles themselves by the energy change.

“This is nice,” said the homunculus in its new container. “Lots of space! Kind of smells funny, though. What’s it made of?”

“We can enclose the worm in one corner while we bring in the doll,” Heinz said, and even though it didn’t have ears their little subject clearly perked up as he spoke- it hadn’t known their exact plan, until then.

“What are you talking about? What doll?” it was asking, and it sounded excited, which caused Marcoh’s expression to harden.

They went through with it anyway. It was easy to trap the homunculus in a corner, changing the shape of the container with basic alchemy, and simultaneously opening an entrance on the other side. The soldier doll had to be dragged in by some of the guards- wearing a special collar attached to long poles, so it couldn’t reach anyone with its grasping fingers. It looked hungry to Heinz, with that gaping, seeking mouth. Like a hungry toddler.

The worm in the cage went still when it was brought in, curling around its tail. Perhaps it thought that if it did anything, they would take the doll- and all the bounty it contained- away again. It was truly silent for the first time since the project had started.

When the doll was inside, Marcoh only hesitated a second more before activating the reverse circle, which returned the new cage to its normal shape and division, the worm and the doll now taking up the same space.

Neither one wasted any time- it was almost humorous how they lunged at each other, but Heinz couldn’t really laugh, he was too interested in what would happen next. The homunculus- artificial lizard, next to an artificial human, really- darted up one skinny, reaching arm with surprising agility, and then launched itself into the wide mouth, the slimy tail whipping inside before teeth could come down to bite it. The doll reeled for a second, seemingly confused- eager prey, that must be new- and then it froze, all the muscles locking, and Heinz suddenly smelled electricity in the air.

The doll doubled over then, bony fingers clawing at the air before its chest, the single eye rolling. The image was grotesque. The thing stuck its tongue out like it was in pain, making a high _ghhhkkk_ sound from somewhere deep inside its throat, stumbling back and forth across the floor. Only after Heinz had to watch this torture did it start to change. 

But oh, change it did! The grey limbs and torso shrunk, losing length in favour of bulk, toned muscles appearing where there had been but skin and bones before. From the head- which was also changing shape, the eye splitting and moving down, the jaw shrinking and widening- streams of loose grey tentacles sprouted, or maybe that was hair, and by now the thing was kneeling. The monitor circle was going crazy.

Heinz had an instant to consider the new build the creature had taken on- small and slender but athletic, with much more muscle detail- and then the colours changed, too. The sickly grey became a blinding white, and jet black silk wrapped tight around the torso, hips, and limbs, with certain areas left bare, what was that about? The long hair changed too, becoming more obviously fibrous, the colour a deep near-black kind of green.

The circles went still.

The creature tossed its head back to expose its face, a young face with sharp eyes and a wide mouth and a small nose that turned up slightly on the end. It breathed, chest rising, and Heinz was suddenly struck by its appearance in a way that surprised him utterly- how could it have come out so attractive? In the falling of that chest, and the tiny movements that betrayed muscle in the jaw and throat, was an allure he could never have anticipated. And the eyes...they were so entirely human, with delicate lashes and small creases, eyes that were looking right at him. Purple eyes. Purple, oh, that meant-

“You see?” said Envy. “I told you I was _pretty.”_

~

“You have no idea how good this feels,” Envy was saying, and now it- he? that seemed more natural now- stood, stretching out white limbs like he had been sleeping. His voice, in terms of intonation and inflection, was identical to before- but the new depth that came with having full-sized lungs revealed new tones in the timbre that Heinz hadn’t heard before- darker, sweeter ones. “I hope you got what you needed, too.”

“I’m sure we did,” Heinz said, it was true, the monitor circles had etched so much onto their surfaces, Marcoh and he should get to work on them right away- though he didn’t much want to, not just yet. And oh, he wasn’t supposed to talk to it, but that was so hard when it looked and sounded so wholly human, so natural, so...charming.

Well, not wholly human. Heinz had lived in the North for years and he had never seen someone that pale, and he had certainly never seen anyone with green hair, or hair of that strange texture at all. The stuff looked a little- no, a lot- like the spines of a spider plant, or a mandrake.

Ah, yes, and he knew what mandrakes were for, in legend. So that was that, then.

Envy was admiring himself then, playing with his hair and the funny skort he was wearing (though logically, he wasn’t actually wearing anything), standing on one leg to point his toes like a dancer. On one thigh, Heinz saw a little red mark- a circle of some kind- 

“Hey!” he snapped suddenly, and he ran up to the cage, because he realized Envy could have made a transmutation circle on his own body. “What’s that-!”

Envy just stopped to stare at him, not moving to hide, and once closer Heinz could see it wasn’t a transmutation circle at all. Which it couldn’t have been, now that he thought, since Marcoh had said the homunculi couldn’t perform alchemy beyond their own natural mechanisms. Rather, it was a tattoo- an ouroboros, infinity, the snake that devours its own tail.

“Do you like that?” Envy purred, and in that voice the words sounded terribly seductive, and he stepped closer to the wall of the cage, lifting his leg so Heinz could see. “All my siblings had one too. It was Father’s little joke, I think, or maybe his prayer. He wanted to live forever, after all.”

Ignoring the undeniable separation that was the container, Heinz was mere inches from Envy’s skin just then, and the mark was high up on exposed thighs, yeah, that ‘outfit’ was definitely questionable, almost _slutty-_ and Heinz was suddenly flushed all over, so he stepped back, swallowing hard because his throat was dry from how Envy was smiling at him. He had sharp teeth, Heinz saw. 

“We should get to work,” Marcoh said, and Heinz agreed.

~

For the rest of the week the atmosphere in the laboratory was different, or at least it was different for Heinz. They had plenty of information to go over, just from one transformation- so much to decode, on the nature of the change, areas targeted, balance shifted. It hadn’t really happened, now that he thought, how Heinz would have expected- he had assumed Envy would take the stone inside, and leave the doll itself, but it seemed to have absorbed the entire thing.

These scientific thoughts were what he used to distract himself from having to look at the homunculus in the container. He certainly looked like an ‘artificial human’ now. It was hard to associate the pale, effeminate young man in there with the slimy little worm from before. No, Heinz had certainly had no special interest in the worm. He had been amused by it, but it hadn’t distracted him like this, hadn’t made him shift in his seat when he felt those purple eyes on him, hadn’t made him blush whenever white lips parted in a smile. Strange, that the green colour should stay only in the hair.

“So what are you doing today?” Envy asked, whenever they set up for the morning, and Heinz knew he wasn’t supposed to answer but it was more difficult not to now, with the imploring tilt of the head the creature always applied. He supposed it would be easier to gag Envy now, but he didn’t bring it up, because he certainly didn’t want that idea in anyone else’s head. He liked listening to Envy talk, even if it made him less productive.

“I’m doing just the same,” Envy would continue, and often he giggled, which was a surprisingly cute sound. “What I always do, just sitting in here...God, this is boring.”

As Heinz watched from under his brows the homunculus leaned back from a kneeled position, so that his head touched the floor and his torso was stretched out. Lean muscles could be seen moving in his belly. Like this his hair rested elegantly around his head, like some spiky halo, and he spread his thighs apart slowly and then Heinz had to look away.

“It really wouldn’t hurt to say something to me,” he said after a while. “I might be helpful. You never know. But if you won’t, then I will make sure I’m not helpful _at all.”_

It was a childish kind of threat, and hardly a serious one, but the pout was audible in his voice. Over his papers, Heinz smiled in spite of himself.

~

“They are made of the same stuff, I think,” Marcoh was saying, and he coughed into his fist at the end of the sentence, holding up the chart of elements they had found in Envy and the soldier doll, prior to the transmutation. “That’s how it was able to absorb the doll.”

“He,” Heinz corrected automatically, and when Marcoh looked at him strangely he suddenly had a deep and profound shock to his sense of perception. “Wait, Envy is a ‘he’, right?”

“No,” Envy called out from inside the cage. “And no, I’m not a ‘she’ either.”

“That’s hardly worth discussing,” Marcoh said, and he coughed again, this time for longer, so long Heinz had a moment to reel inside in the face of this new information, which he had no previous model to understand it with. “It’s just a- it’s just a-”

Marcoh actually doubled over this time, unable to finish his sentence, and for the first time Heinz felt concerned, putting a hand on his back, and then his forehead. The skin there was warm, and a little damp, the red of fever no doubt not showing through beneath the scar tissue on his face.

“How long have you been like this?” Heinz asked softly when he was finished, and Marcoh just shook his head, like he knew what was coming and was already prepared to refuse it.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said, his voice rough in his chest. “We need to keep working.”

“No, no, you seem very sick,” Heinz replied. “And at your age, that can be serious. You might even need to go to the hospital. At the very least, you should go home for today.”

“I shouldn’t,” Marcoh said and, with skills learned from being on the receiving end of such techniques by his mother, Heinz firmed up, putting his hands on his hips.

“Oh no you don’t,” he said. “You’re going to bed. I can finish up for today. Everyone will understand.”

Within half an hour he had shuffled Marcoh into his jacket and out of the laboratory, ordering one of the guards to accompany him home. Coughing colds like that had to be nipped at the bud, after all.

It was only when he was getting ready to go back to work that he realized Envy had been silent the entire time. Now, he was looking at Heinz with those strange and lovely eyes again, and with a shock Heinz realized they were entirely alone. It was just the two of them in the lab, now.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Heinz said lamely of Marcoh, though he had a feeling Envy didn’t care about that at all, watching him shift back and forth on bare feet, winding one strand of dark hair through his fingers. Or her fingers. Or whatever.

“So you can...finish up, without him?” Envy asked, coming to a standstill very close to the glass.

“Yeah,” Heinz replied, and after the word left his mouth he felt an instance of embarrassment, and then sudden empowerment- who cared about that stupid rule, anyway? He only kept it to save face in front of the senior alchemist anyway. “Yeah, I’m sure I can. I was just cataloging some data from the transmutation.”

“You got a lot from just that,” Envy said, and now he was smiling, he didn’t jump around like he had the first time Heinz had replied, though it would have been cute if he did. 

“From ‘just’ that? Surely you realize how complex...how _amazing_ your abilities are.”

Envy bit his lower lip, still smiling slightly, like he was being bashful, what in the world? Heinz couldn’t help that he blushed at the sight, blushed all over.

“Well thanks, Mr Mystery Alchemist,” Envy cooed, and no one had ever spoken to Heinz like that before, it made him feel bold, like he was a general at the front of an army.

“My name is Heinz,” he said. “Kristoff Heinz, the Iron Circle Alchemist.”

Envy mouthed his given name, and then grinned, all sharp teeth and too-bright eyes.

“Well it’s nice to be introduced at last, Crim-”

He stopped suddenly, eyes going wide, his expression becoming for a second one of empty shock. Then it wore off, and the smile crept back up, and he wondered what the pretty creature had thought of.

“...Iron Circle.”


	3. End

“The food here is just lovely,” Mother said, flipping through the menu at her seat. “This is the best lunch spot in town.” She had taken upon herself to act as a guide for Heinz in Central- even though he was an adult and perfectly capable of caring for himself, and didn’t much enjoy these kinds of things anyway. But he had free time. It would be cruel not to indulge her.

“And how are things with your ‘project’,” Mother continued when she had settled on a favoured page. “They’re not working you too hard, are they?”

“No, no,” Heinz replied, though he doubted she was truly interested in the specifications of his work. Alchemy had never meant much to her. “I’m fine. It’s fascinating stuff, really. Making great strides.”

“That’s wonderful. And…” she looked up at him now, tearing her eyes from the salads, a little smile decorating wrinkled red lips. “What about your personal life? Run across anything...special?”

Looking at her in the noon sun as it came through the window they sat beside- with her grey hair, her pearl earrings and fine dress, the wedding ring whose partner had been underground for years- he felt something like mischief strike him. A troublemaking elf whispered in his ear.

“As a matter of fact, I have,” he said, and to his pleasure she folded the menu aside immediately and completely, her eyes wide and her mouth opening. “I’ve met someone.”

“Oh, Kristoff!” she gushed. “You must tell me everything!”

“There isn’t much to tell,” he said, modest, and that wasn’t a lie. “No particular progress. But I rather fancy...her, and I think she fancies me, too.”

If the burning looks in those violet eyes were anything to go on. The seductive arch of those brows. The way strong white thighs parted when he looked over, like a suggestion, like some kind of offer.

“I met her at work,” he continued. “She’s part of the project, as well.”

“And what is she like?” his mother asked, almost interrupting him, so eager she was.

“She’s clever,” Heinz said. “and very expressive. A little strange, maybe, but that’s...it’s charming. And very pretty, of course.”

Very pretty indeed. In his mind Heinz watched Envy laugh at something, some offhand comment he had made, saw how the homunculus’ hair fell back, white throat bared, the way that sharp smile touched every part of his face. Heinz realized he hadn’t lied at all to his mother- Envy was clever, and expressive, and charming. It only sounded like a lie to him because of what was omitted- those descriptions made it sound like he was talking about an ordinary girl.

Not a shapeshifting demon he was experimenting on, who he only saw behind a wall of his own making, who was deep down nothing more than a slimy little parasite. Though it seemed like forever since Envy had been that to him.

“You must tell me everything that happens,” his mother said, and she didn’t sense the little film of falsehood that had slipped over his words. “Everything. I want to know when there is progress, as you say.”

When they parted ways after the meal, Heinz felt poorly for his little mischief. He couldn’t report anything to his mother. There would be no progress. He couldn’t take Envy on a date, never mind the more advanced things she wished for.

After all, when the work was done, Envy was going to be destroyed.

…

This thought hadn’t occurred to him in a while.

For the first time in many nights, Heinz had trouble falling asleep as he lay in bed, listening to late-night cars rumble down the cobblestone path. The thought of leaving Envy to die was affecting him in ways it hadn’t before, not at the beginning, when he had agreed with Marcoh that it was a good thing, a necessary thing. What had Envy done so wrong, anyway? Why did he have to be destroyed? If they wanted a homunculus specimen- one of the most complex alchemical creations to ever exist- why not keep this one?

Of course, he had a file to tell him why. Ishval, murder, manipulation of the government, Ishval again. But those things were just words on paper to him. They didn’t matter. They were nothing to the creature locked in the lab, with those glittering eyes and proud smile. Something that the thought of losing filled him with a deep blue, sickly ache.

Heinz thought for a long time that night. 

~

“Do we really have to kill him?” Heinz asked one night, after work, when the laboratory had gone dark on Envy’s eyes and he and Marcoh stood on the steps in the outside air. He hadn’t wanted to ask this inside. For some reason, he hadn’t wanted Envy to hear. “I mean- he is a person, in a sense. A war criminal maybe, but…”

He was floundering, perhaps he shouldn’t have said anything at all, but now that he had started he had to go through with it.

“...but still a person. And he might be useful to keep around.”

Marcoh just looked at him- he had a tired expression on his face, one tinged with maybe, the faintest bit of sadness.

“Envy is a monster,” he said, flatly. “And it should have been destroyed a long time ago.”

“I don’t accept that.”

Heinz felt himself flush under the sharp eye Marcoh gave him, he was flustered now, but he stood his ground. “I don’t. I don’t think he’s any more of a monster than anyone who worked under the old regime- had to do things for that corrupt government.”

“Envy _was_ the corrupt government-”

“And he clearly has feelings,” Heinz continued over Marcoh. “He thinks and feels just like everyone else. He’s capable of happiness, and pain, and...love.”

Accidentally, he had revealed more than he had intended. The words floated in the night air, and Heinz suddenly wished he could swallow them back, could seal his lips because saying any of this had probably been a mistake.

“Envy is not capable of love,” Marcoh said. “It is only capable of one feeling, you can guess which. That, and _malice.”_

This time, it was Marcoh who turned away from him on the steps.

“You shouldn’t have been listening to it.” he said.

~

Marcoh was out again the next day- Heinz knew he was trying too hard, coming back to work every time his situation improved even slightly, never giving himself a chance to recover completely. His insistence on pushing himself kept knocking him down again. Heinz now wondered, though, if maybe Marcoh was doing it because he didn’t want Heinz alone with Envy. Well, he would certainly want to avoid that now, after what Heinz had said so stupidly the night previous.

“Can you love others?” Heinz asked spontaneously, finding it hard to take interest in his paperwork, the conversation he had had with Marcoh and Envy’s white thighs distracting him too much. The homunculus was lying across the floor on his back, hair spread out in waves, legs stretched up one wall. When he spoke, he received a purple look of surprise.

“...what?”

“Can you...love,” Heinz said, embarrassed again. “Have you ever loved anyone? It is possible for you, isn’t it?”

Envy blinked slowly, like he wasn’t sure what to do, and he wasn’t smiling. In the furrow of sharp green brows there was something a little dark...sadness, maybe.

“I have,” he said slowly. “I loved my sister. And…”

He stopped, bit his lower lip.

“...and a man.”

There was silence for a moment. Envy was normally not one to leave the air empty of his voice- and this, to Heinz, was touching.

“What was your sister like?” Heinz asked, tentative of the atmosphere, but now he wanted to know. Envy had never spoken about these kinds of things before.

“She was very chic,” Envy said, the smallest little smile curving up the corners of his lips. “Sexy. And powerful, too. She always knew what to do. She always let me play around…”

Heinz was uncomfortably aware of the past tense in Envy’s words, and knew what he knew from the very nature of this work. Envy was the last homunculus, after all.

“What happened to her?” Heinz asked when Envy had quieted down, when the smile had slipped from his face.

“She was burned to death,” he said, flat. “By the same man who turned me into a worm.”

Glittering eyes met his, refocusing, now Heinz couldn’t read that expression at all. 

“...but I would have thought you already knew that.”

“I guess I didn’t,” Heinz said. “I’m sorry.”

Envy didn’t say anything to that. He hadn’t moved from his position at the wall- and now, snakelike, he just watched Heinz from behind the glass.

After that, it didn’t seem right to keep talking, so Heinz buried himself in the charts. Envy was quiet.

After an hour or two of paper grind- which he could hardly focus on anyway- something occurred to Heinz. All the homunculi were dead, but certainly some human members of the old regime had survived. And what had Envy said? Other than his sister, he had also loved ‘a man’. What did that mean? It was an inexplicably nasty feeling, the thought that someone who had Envy’s heart might be out there, somewhere. Had Heinz misinterpreted all that flirtation?

“The man you loved,” Heinz asked suddenly, breaking the silence like their conversation had never stopped. “Who was he?”

Envy looked over at him again, and this time he smiled, a slightly mischievous smile.

“Why do you want to know?” he purred. “Wondering how you compare?”

Heinz felt his face warm, like someone had cut a hole in the ceiling and was flooding him with summer sun. He hadn’t meant to be so obvious.

“He was a wonderful man,” Envy continued, and now he was not so teasing, a little edge of wistfulness had crept back into his voice. “Very handsome, and intelligent. And the things he did for me, you wouldn’t even _believe_ …he was the greatest of all the alchemists of Ishval.”

Envy sat up at last then, folding his legs beneath him, letting his hair fall over his face. His expression couldn’t be seen at all, now.

“But you don’t have to worry. He’s dead too. They’re all dead. Everyone except for me.”

Heinz had nothing to say to that. But his question had very much been answered- he couldn’t bear the thought of letting Envy die now. He was too human. Why couldn’t Marcoh see it? What did he mean, Envy couldn’t love? Here, he was clearly in terrible mourning.

What was Heinz going to _do?_

~

Over the next month Heinz was hesitant to continue working in earnest. Marcoh recovered from his sickness gradually, until he was back to his normal self, and not missing any days at all- this was cruel, but Heinz almost wished he would stay sick instead. The days alone with Envy had been enjoyable. And now that he was back, there was little excuse for twiddling his thumbs, for taking long lunch breaks. But Heinz resented every new number put down, every accurate observation, because each one put them closer to the day where no more information would be necessary- the day Envy would be destroyed.

The homunculus, maybe, sensed it too. He seemed more lethargic during the days, talking less. He watched Heinz closely, but not with resentment in his eyes, rather some quiet contemplation. Once or twice, in the mornings when the alchemists had come in to start working, his eyes had been faintly red around the edges, like he had been crying.

More details were recorded. Without food or water, the homunculus slowly burned Philosopher’s Stone to mitigate the effects of starvation and dehydration. However with those things, no waste was produced.

The mass of the homunculus did not correspond to the appearance. With the absorption of another soldier doll, the weight doubled while the figure remained the same, and the added stone allowed for a few more transformations to be performed.

Despite appearing human, much of the constructed biology inside the homunculus was reptile.

The days were whittling down. Eventually, Envy would no be longer useful.

Armstrong came a few times, to oversee- as well as, once, the new Führer. Envy always perked up for them, becoming more talkative and sniping- maybe, he didn’t want to show his feelings. Wanted to be proud to those who would kill him. Heinz could understand that.

“Many soldiers under the old regime have transitioned,” Heinz said to Marcoh once, wanting to get the other alchemist’s support before challenging higher authorities. “Since we didn’t make them the enemy, they easily started to work for us.”

“This thing is the enemy.” said Marcoh.

“Only because we have made him so. If we gave him a chance, he could change- couldn’t you, Envy?”

Envy looked sullenly over at them from in the cage. He seemed sore from the last experiment, which had involved electricity. Was it just Heinz’s imagination, or had his hair in recent days seemed less vibrant, drooping down his body like the leaves of a wilting plant?

“They won’t give me a chance,” he said, his voice as flat as Marcoh’s, and after that the older alchemist insisted they continue work.

“We can discuss this more later,” he said. “For now, I want to finish this.”

The promise of later talk was just barely enough to keep Heinz quiet.

~

The day following Heinz was called to an office in Central before work- he had resented that, not wanting to spend a moment outside of the lab. During the evenings, his days were very grey, lacklustre. It wasn’t that he had no one to talk to, or nothing to do, rather that there was no one he wanted to talk to, and nothing he wanted to do. He had found himself becoming dependant on that little touch of green.

“You’re being transferred back to Briggs,” said the woman at the office. “I have your paperwork here.”

“What?” Heinz felt chilled all over at that, and not just from the thought of his former station. “What do you mean? When did that come in?”

“Yesterday,” she said. “An express order I think. Well, you can sign this to show you’ve received it.”

The pen offered was not taken.

“But why? What did I do?” Heinz asked, his voice pitching up with his panic, he was beginning to shake and there was white noise in his ears. The woman just looked at him.

“It says your contract for your current project has been terminated. Anything else, you might want to take up with your supervising officer...though, you should have already been informed.”

Heinz tried to calm himself. There was an itching fear inside him, one he couldn’t bear, one that told him he had no time to waste- that if the contract was up, then the research was done, and Envy…but he had to focus, he needed to do something, and of course he had to be smart about it.

“When does this termination enter into effect?” he asked the secretary, after a moment.

“Immediately,” she replied.

He took a deep breath.

“Then let me return soon. I just need a word with my...supervising officer.”

She nodded slowly, frowning a little, and then Heinz was gone. Running to his car, fumbling with the keys, the scraps of some half-baked plan turning over and over in his head. He had some money with him, didn’t he? And his military ID? That would have to do. From his briefcase he pulled blank papers- cheap things- and with a pen and trembling hands made three circles; two for making doors, and one for making a cage. It would have to be enough.

It needed to be enough.

~

Parking his car in a frenzy, the laboratory seemed to ordinarily quiet for what he had been expecting. But then, why would there be pomp and circumstance? They probably only needed one man to do it. The front door wasn’t even locked.

But inside the one to the laboratory was, and Heinz’s key didn’t work. The locks had been changed- alchemically, by the looks of things, and recently, too. They meant to keep him out. Heinz thanked any God he could think of for having the guard be on patrol just then, instead of stationed by the laboratory.

Heinz used the first of his key circles on the door- he had written it for a lock of this type, after all, and in a second the thing was open to him.

“Heinz-!”

Marcoh looked surprised to see him, sitting with papers spread out on his desk, why did he seem so distressed? And Envy was still there, thank all, looking over from a position on the floor of his cage.

Marcoh began to stand up, and Heinz fumbled with his papers, pressing the one for the cage into the ground- letting the power run through his arms and across the ground, to sprout bars around the other alchemist, pushing him away from his pen and papers. He couldn’t interfere. There was no time- how long before the guards came back? Before someone came for Envy?

“Heinz, you don’t know what you’re doing,” Marcoh said, and there was genuine fear in his voice. Heinz was so tired of the other alchemist, now. He had no right to be afraid, he wasn’t the one who was going to be murdered for simply _existing._ “Heinz, you can’t do this-!”

Heinz ignored him. He was sweating all over now, and there was a kind of yellow electricity running through his whole body, a feeling that grounded him completely and utterly in the present. He had only one circle left, and the delicate little look Envy was giving him was stunning.

The last transmutation created an opening in the container he had made, one large enough for a human to walk through easily. When it was done he stepped back and held out his hand, and Envy reached out to take it, only overshot slightly, Heinz saw something bright and red flash before his face-

…

~

Marcoh yelled with an animal frustration from inside the cage as he watched the younger alchemist’s head roll across the floor, the body slumping to its knees before its last creation. Envy hopped around the spray of blood, sword turning back into an arm, and the smile they wore now was not delicate at all.

“Fucking _finally,”_ they snarled. “I couldn’t wait to kill that bastard. You saw how he stared at me all the time, didn’t you? And what a fucking _moron.”_

They licked their teeth, and looked over at the body only one more time.

“...he couldn’t even begin to compare.”

Marcoh was shaking from the shock of it, the sight was too much to believe just yet, and that was why he had sent the other alchemist away, he had seen how things were getting out of hand…

“And what should I do with you?” purred the mandrake, voice silky with self-satisfaction. “Since you’ve caused me so much trouble, I should at least pay it back.”

In his cage Marcoh screamed again, this time for help, hearing over his own trembling voice a high, serpentine hiss. This next moments were crucial. Envy didn’t have much power, not now, but if no one came before they could get to the other laboratory-

Just then, as both the man and the monster in the room realized these things, there arrived an answer to the prayers. Two guards had heard the shouting and, seeing the door to the laboratory hanging open, ran in with their guns raised. 

_“Shoot it-”_ Marcoh yelled, for he was half-mad with his own helplessness (caught in a cell with _that thing_ standing outside it once again) and Envy made a horrible growling noise that was far too large for their chest, lunging towards the guards with a speed that seemed too great for their heavy body. The barrels flashed- what a nightmare of a scene to walk in on.

The rising animal roar turned into something more like a yelp, and one of the guards had his skull crushed, but the other was only shoved away.

Envy pivoted left, following the feeling of the red stone that vibrated weakly through the air, and were cut off by two more approaching guards- the path was blocked, they weren’t strong enough, already they almost couldn’t breathe. It was in a state like panic that they turned to the front door instead, and before they could get out the fallen guard landed two more shots in their back.

The air outside smelled like city, but it was still so fresh by comparison, fresher than anything they had breathed in months. Except breathing in general was difficult- and oh, if only they had been given another handful of Philosopher’s Stone before this, they might have been able to heal themself and become a bird and be free forever- but they hadn’t, and now the pain was too great and it was making the ends of their limbs numb, their joints useless.

“Shit,” Envy hissed, falling to the pavement on their knees against their will, and they heard another gun cock behind their head. “Help, _Kimblee-!”_

BANG!

~

The last homunculus didn’t think much after that final gunshot. The aim had been unusually perfect- almost as if by fate, the bullet had pierced the tiny fragment of worn-down Philosopher’s Stone they had kept inside, destroying even the worm before it could manifest. They dissolved rather quickly. By the time Marcoh was freed, the wind had even taken the ashes, and there was nothing left to examine.

The other bodies made much more of a mess. Those ones involved family calls, and funeral procedures, and someone to wipe up all the blood.

However, the surviving alchemist was left with enough usable data to have the experiment be considered a success, even without the final deconstruction process. Certainly, if things became too desperate the young son of the former Führer could always be taken in for examination. 

And perhaps the spirit of the country weighed just a little less after that day. Perhaps the clouds became just a little lighter. Slowly but surely, the hell-world that had been created by the old regime was being taken apart. The Underground dismantled, the experiments uncovered there appropriately catalogued and disposed of. The border skirmishes, under new management, were settling down. The tunnels of the nation-wide circle were collapsed. And now, though they didn’t know it, there was vengeance for all those who had died to that strange creature, the _parvulus invidia._

Old blood could only stain for so long. Eventually, there would be no traces left- some day, in the far future, there would be nothing and no one to say that any of these horrible things had happened at all.

And wasn’t that better for everyone?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ‘Invidia’ is Latin for ‘envy’. ‘Parvulus’, on the other hand, has a few definitions: it can mean ‘little, small’, or ‘unimportant’, and also ‘petty, or mean-spirited’.


End file.
